PhDchat is a conversation community on Twitter. Twitter only allows for 140 character messages and it would be impossible to include everyone from a community in a message by using their username (i.e. @RuthFT). However, by including a hashtag (#phdchat) in a message you can place a marker that other people can search for. This means that you can search on twitter for all messages (well, from the last 10 days to a maximum of 3200 tweets I think) that carry that marker.

If you are logged in to twitter that search will update (well, it’ll tell you there are new tweets) in real-time, which means that you can effectively hold a conversation with people even if you aren’t following them. PhDchat holds a real-time conversation at 7:30pm UK time every Wednesday. It lasts an hour, and is focussed around a single theme that is chosen by poll during the prior week. It is gently led and moderated by Nasima Riazat (@NSRiazat) who is a PhD student through the Open University and a teacher, though the community initially formed by a small group from the #UKed community.

I contribute sporadically to the conversation, as some weeks are more convenient than others and some topics more interesting or relevant than others. But that is one of the joys of this community: there is no exclusivity beyond, perhaps, the ability to use twitter. It does not matter if you dip in and out, listen but don’t contribute, or turn up for the first time next week and ask questions everyone has answered last year. The community is happy to have you, and everyone is happy to answer your questions anyway.

In part I suspect that this open access to the conversation is the result of limited information on each person being available. When taking part in the conversation, all you can really see is the person’s profile image, and I find that I pay little attention to them. I have no idea, unless someone tells me, whether that person is a student, has graduated, is a lecturer, has ever taught, is young, retired or in the middle of a career. There is something very democratising about not immediately feeling that one has to defer to someone else – or be intimidated or impressed – based on age/experience/status.

For me, PhDchat represents a community of experience that I can call on, and a forum in which I am free to ask for advice and help as I need it. No one need reply, but the few times I have asked for recommendations on titles, or advice, people have been very generous. I hope that I would be equally so, if someone were to ask for something I can help with. The community seems to me to have a very generous spirit perhaps in part because, unlike academia, there is no question of ‘networking’ or building relationships in the hopes of exploiting them for future professional gain. For me there is a sense of almost innocent enthusiasm for research and discovery about the #phdchat conversations and community.

In part this is reflected by the lack of strong ‘ownership’ or control over the community by Nasima. In addition offshoot projects are not controlled or owned by her, but by other members of the community. The PhDchat wiki, is ‘owned’ not by Liz Thackery, an early member of the community and there is a critical, reflective writing project dissecting the intricacies of this rather new form of communication by another group of members. In these offshoots I see a lack of territoriality and an openness to frank and genuine collaboration without status hierarchy that I think is fundamentally linked to the way that communication occurs in PhDchat as a result of Twitter’s structure.

This openness is something that, even though I interact with only sporadically, I really value. I never feel judged, nor that my questions or comments on topics are unwanted, lack value or wrong. I often come out of the PhDchat feeling energised by the sense of community and shared experience that is generated. Thinking back on the last year of PhDchat, I also find it an illuminating and relieving contrast to the world of academia, where collaboration is fraught with dangers, territoriality and rivalry.

I’ve also agreed to speak at the IoA Graduate Student Conference on the topic of social media and professional identity, which has made it even more pressing that this blog is brought up to scratch!

Consequently there’ll be some changes happening over the next week or so, as I rearrange pages and posts, update links and generally give the place a spring clean.

I’ve already set a new template style, which I hope you like and will enable easier navigation. I’m in the process of adjusting everything to fit. If things are a little confused for the moment, I do hope you’ll forgive me. It’ll all be in place soon, and hopefully looking even better.

I was presenting a paper on ‘Teaching and learning in Experimental Archaeology‘ (abstract here), which is one of the reasons I have been quiet recently. Along with proof-reading and chapter-writing deadlines, writing a conference paper on a topic outside my PhD was quite challenging and as a result I have been knuckling down.

The paper itself went over far better than I could ever have hoped. I felt like I was taking a chance, presenting a theory dominated and teaching/learning focussed paper at a practical and science dominated archaeology conference. However the attendees gave me overwhelmingly positive feedback, which was not only a relief but in fact buoyed my spirits with regard to engagement with teaching theory in archaeology.

Beyond my own paper, the conference itself was great, with a number of really great papers. I did a reasonably amount of live-tweeting the conference papers as they were given, using the hash-tag #exparch6, which was an interesting experience and I hope went some way to increasing awareness of the conference and the work of experimenters.

Rather than write a formal conference review, which I will probably do for HMSNews/PIA or similar, I’ve put together a Storify using the tweets of myself and others. It’s very informal and, well, story-like, but I hope that this too will make it an interesting read for people not specifically engaged with experimental archaeology.

Considering the brevity of these documents – typically less than 500 words – the amount of effort required to write one seems disproportionate! Whilst some conferences provide detailed examples of what they wish to see, others do not even give formatting guidelines.

I’ve had mixed success in the past, and the current abstract is intended for a particularly important conference which I really want to present at, so I’ve been trying to create an explicit pathway for creating the best abstract I can. Some aspects of abstract writing remain a bit of a mystery, so I’d appreciate any feedback you could give, but I present below what I’ve learnt so far:

Preparation – know your audience, know your material

One important aspect of abstract writing that is sometimes overlooked is the conference itself. Abstracts have to be tailored to the whims of the conference and session organisers. It is worth making sure that the conference you are eyeing up really is the best place for you to present. With money for conferences sometimes in short supply, check with your supervisor or colleagues whether this is the best conference. If you are certain,

• Track down the names of the session organisers.
• See if anyone you know, perhaps your supervisor, has the abstract handbook from the last edition of the conference
• If the previous conference has published proceedings it may be worth examining this to get a feel for the approaches the conference prefers
• Identify any special themes to this year’s conference
• Double-check the abstract submission guidelines and deadline
• If you are working with other people, get their permission before you submit

Trying to fit into the conference ‘theme’ is unlikely to work well at graduate level, because unless life is being particularly serendipitous, your work is probably so niche that shoe-horning it into a ‘theme’ will be obvious and not that successful. Don’t try and make your work something it isn’t, just to fit it into a particular conference.

Remember that in general, conference organisers only like to include presentations by people who have completed their work. If you have an incomplete study, it will be difficult to get a conference to accept your abstract because you won’t be able to tell them the conclusions of your work. This is a key piece of information they use to judge whether your work is suitable for the conference!

Whilst important members of your field, including your supervisor, may have a laissez-faire attitude to submitting on time, you are unlikely to have that luxury. Remember to draft the abstract early and enquire whether your supervisor will offer constructive criticism before you send it off. Submit on time: whilst you can try submitting late, don’t hold out too much hope!

Abstract structure – attention to detail

Every discipline is different, but there are some general guidelines that you can follow. Abstracts are often broken down into three paragraphs:

• Paragraph 1: What the problem is and why people should care.
  Introduce the context of your study, perhaps including the particular issue or question your study responds to. In general people don’t mention their study in this paragraph, but use this opportunity to set up the context of the study and demonstrate their understanding of current literature. It helps if you can demonstrate that your question or issue is interesting and worth answering.
• Paragraph 2: Your approach, and your results
  This is where we get the real meat of what you might present. Outline your project, the theoretical or practical techniques you used, the experiment or source material, and how you answered the question you outlined in paragraph 1. The number of words you have to play with governs to a certain extent how much detail you go into, but it’s worth trying to make this important section as meaningful as possible. Remember to explain your evidence and where it comes from, not just what it is you’re arguing. If your paper is an argument, remember to establish the steps you go through to get to the final point.
• Paragraph 3: Conclusions, and why people should listen to you.
  Here you discuss briefly how your work affects the wider context of your discipline, and why it is relevant and exciting. You need to convince the reader that your research is significant and that you deserve the time to present it.

Some people place the study in the wider disciplinary context right at the beginning, others suggest making the first sentence/paragraph bold and challenging. That’s probably okay if you can count on people knowing the material reasonably well, but in some disciplines or interdisciplinary events your subject can be so niche that you need that first paragraph to properly give the context.

The above structure works for a 300-500 word abstract, but if you are allowed more or less you will need to adjust this outline. No matter how short or long, remember to avoid generalisations and make every word count. Reviewers always appreciate someone who gets to the point!

Abstract formatting – clean and clear

• Some conferences have a template. If so, use this and do not deviate from it.
• Pick a good name for your presentation. I’m not good at this myself, but it’s important.
• Don’t go over the word limit! Your work may be dismissed out of hand.
• Equally, it’s not a good idea to produce less than the minimum word number suggested.
• Leave off the jargon if you can. If you use anything obscure, explain it. Otherwise, do without.
• If the conference does not give formatting guidelines, use those of an associated or most relevant journal
• Try not to use too many references – generally five is enough for a big abstract – consider including ‘classic’ and ‘cutting edge’ references
• Double check any references if they involve one or more of the session organisers!
• Don’t include a bibliography unless asked for one, it’s usually a waste of words
• Do not forget the names of second/third authors

Some conference organisers send their abstracts to be reviewed anonymously – it might be worth making sure that any references to your previous work that you make are done carefully so that you don’t spoil that. Generally it is advisable not to put your name on the abstract or in the file name of a document unless you are asked to.

As ever, double-check things, proof-read and get as many people as you can to help you read through and check the draft. Supervisors should be happy to do this. Keep reading, revising and coming back to the abstract for as long as you can, as it will really benefit from your tender loving care.

Finally…

Conferences are a great way to offend people, and this is also true of abstracts. Remember that the abstracts are likely to be visible to lots of people, so don’t be overly critical of another researcher, even if that is the main thrust of your work. Trust your supervisor’s judgement on this. If your work is conducted with someone else, make sure they are happy with what you are submitting. Lastly, if you need to include an additional author due to their earlier help – do not forget. Some people take this sort of stuff very very seriously.

Whilst writing this series I realised that without understanding how iron is made in a furnace, all this talk about slag is a bit confusing. The following is an attempt to state the process clearly and concisely. As with many aspects of the archaeological record, iron production is not a simple process, so aspects of this may be confusing. Bear with me – and do feel free to ask questions.

The basic idea

Iron in the environment is almost always found combined with other elements (usually oxygen or sulphur) in rocks, excluding meteorites and native iron which have limited archaeological significance. When a rock contains enough iron for it to be profitable for us to attempt to use it to create iron, the rock is referred to as an ore. In order to make them easier to smelt, and to drive off unwanted elements like sulphur, ores can be roasted at around 800C in pits.

The process of turning ores into metal is called smelting, and involves heating the ores to high temperatures (usually around 1200C) in an atmosphere that is at least 75% carbon monoxide (Killick and Gordon 1989, 120). The carbon monoxide strips away the oxygen in the iron ore fragments, reducing the iron oxide to iron metal. Any unwanted minerals are melted down into a liquid rock-like mass called slag.

The furnace

In order for these high temperatures to be reached, the reaction must take place in a container: this is the furnace. Fuel, usually charcoal, is burnt within the furnace creating both the heat and the carbon monoxide necessary for the reaction. To create the high temperatures enough air must reach the charcoal, and this is usually provided by manually forcing air into the furnace using bellows. The bellows are connected to a hole or tube into the furnace referred to by archaeologists as a tuyure.

The furnace is usually made of a ceramic, often tempered with silica in the form of sand grains or crushed quartz, but it can also be made of stones, or may include stone pieces in its construction. Silica helps to protect the ceramic of the furnace from the high temperatures, but in many cases the ceramic melts during the process of smelting.

But what exactly happens inside the furnace?

Exactly what is going on inside a furnace during smelting is not exactly known. The widely accepted theoretical model is:

[Hydrated iron oxides, FeOOH] – - – > haematite (Fe2O3) – - – >  magnentite (Fe3O4) – - – > wüstite (FeO) – - – >iron (Fe)

If we assume the ore has been roasted, and the water driven off any hydrated iron oxides, the chemical reaction can be expressed:

1. 3 Fe2O3 + CO  – - – >  2 Fe3O4 +CO2
2. Fe3O4 + CO – - – > 3 FeO + CO2
3. FeO + CO – - – > Fe + CO2

At the same time, some iron is lost to the production of slag. As well as iron oxides, many ores contain unwanted ‘gangue’ oxides like silica, and as well as the melting furnace wall, the fuel itself may also contain numerous other oxides. In the high temperature conditions of the furnace any silica present is likely to combine with some of the iron (II) oxide, creating a olivine mineral known as fayalite:

2FeO + SiO2 – - – > Fe2SiO4    or    2FeO.SiO2

Fayalite, as well as the lower levels of other oxides, combine to form a liquid with a melting temperature below 1200C. Collectively this is known as slag, and drips through the furnace, sometimes being collected in a pit at the base of the furnace, sometimes being allowed to flow out of the furnace in a process known as ‘tapping’.

Depending on the exact conditions inside the furnace, the iron oxide reduction may take place in stages within the slag, or independently within the individual ore particles.

The difference between iron and copper

The reaction which reduced copper oxides down to copper metal happens in a very similar manner, using similar equipment and raw materials. However copper has a melting point of 1084C, which means that at the temperatures above the copper metal will melt and form a liquid at the bottom of the furnace. This makes it relatively easy to get out of the furnace.

In contrast, the melting temperature of pure iron is 1535C. This means that if the iron remains pure during the smelting process, it can’t melt in the furnace. If the above pathway of reduction is correct, the ore is reduced to lots of microscopic fragments of iron metal. How do these particles end up as useful lumps of iron?

Iron particles, slag and making the bloom

This is where things start to get a bit tricky. Killick and Gordon wrote a short but very interesting paper in 1989 that dealt with how ore particles actually get reduced to iron, and perhaps most importantly how that iron actually conglomerates at the base of the furnace.

I’ve found the paper quite hard going, and I’ve tried in the past to translate it into something visual which would be more accessible, but with limited success. At its most basic we theorise that there are two different theoretical pathways for ore fragments to be reduced. One uses a lot of fuel to create a really reducing atmosphere which turns the ore fragments to a mixture of metal and slag. The other uses less fuel to turn the ore fragments to slag first, which is then reduced to metal.

There are major differences between the raw material use and the outcomes of these methods. In the first method where lots of fuel is used to reduce ore directly to metal, minimal iron is lost to slag production and consequently rather lean (say less than 40% iron) ores can be used. However fuel usage is high, which is an important consideration when the fuel in use is charcoal which is costly and time consuming to produce and is difficult to transport. Additionally the powerful reduction atmosphere is thought to be likely to encourage reduction of other unwanted elements into the metal (Killick and Gordon 1989, 121). Additionally the availability of carbon and the early reduction of iron means that there is the chance that carbon-iron alloys may be created. This might be desirable if a harder iron is desired, but at high levels of carbon (2-4%) cast iron is created. This brittle, hard and not workable by standard smithing techniques.

By contrast, the lower fuel methodology dissolves all the ore to the slag before reducing available FeO to metal out of the slag. The major downside of this methodology is that it relies on having a very rich ore as much slag is created and there is the risk of loosing considerable iron to the slag. Due to the decarburising nature of the slag (Killick and Gordon 1989, 121) these blooms are usually low in carbon, but by controlling the frequency of tapping (Percy, 1864) it is suggested that producers could control how much carbon was taken in and consequently how steely the bloom was.

One of the aims of the analysis of slag is to work out whether these theories can be verified, and whether a particular sample shows evidence of particular production techniques.

And in the end?

So once the bloom is formed at the base of the furnace, what happens? As we’ve discussed, it’s not easy to get to that point. It’s important to remember that you can’t know what’s happening inside the furnace during the smelt – you can guess, and experience informs, but you can’t actually look. All this talk of how producers intentionally controlled the smelt is largely done on faith – only a handful of people in the world have sufficient experience in this method of iron production and all of them were self-taught.

However we do know that as the slag levels build, they will eventually reach the point where they cover the air blast intake holes. At that point anecdotal evidence suggests that the furnace will start booming and bubbling. At this time you have a choice – if you have the sort of furnace with a hole in it for letting slag out, you can proceed to do that. If not, then you have to stop the process there, before the liquid slag flows into your bellows and burns them and you!

If you decide to tap the slag out, you can keep the process going as long as you want, adding more ore and charcoal at regular intervals. If you’re stopping, then in the majority of cases it looks like the producers would break down the front of the furnace and pull out the bloom of iron whilst it was still hot.

At that point the race is on to consolidate the bloom – that is, to drive out all the liquid slag that is likely to be entrapped within the bloom. The bloom is very hot and it is likely that producers wouldn’t have wanted to waste this heat, which takes a lot of fuel to get, so they would have pulled the bloom out and started working it immediately. This involves smashing it with a large sledgehammer and forcing the slag out in a shower of glowing sparks. It’s at this point that the smith can get a feel for the quality of the iron. If the iron has taken in any unwanted elements – phosphorus, sulphur, high levels of carbon – things will start to go wrong and the bloom might break, crack or just be too hard to work.

After that, what happens to the bloom depends on who wants the iron and what it’s being used for. It’s likely to be turned into bars at some point, but whether this always happens at the same place as the smelt is unclear. What we do know is that it’s extremely rare to ever find iron at a smelting site, and if you do find iron bloom pieces it’s likely to have been discarded as unusable rubbish!

Teaching and learning practices are something I’ve become really interested in, after studying for the HEA qualification earlier this year. During this summer’s experimental work I found myself thinking critically about what I was doing, and how I was communicating and being communicated to, within a framework that was drawing heavily on the research I’d done on teaching and learning.

This naturally began to form itself into a discussion in my head, and when the call for papers for the Conference came out, it seemed like a great chance to force myself to finish laying the discussion out explicitly. I was a little surprised that the abstract was excepted as a paper rather than a poster, as I had assumed the organisers would focus more heavily on practical aspects of experimental archaeology. However they’ve constructed a session called “Practicing Experimental Archaeology”, where I’m presenting with another researcher, who is giving a paper entitled “Practitioner, professional and the public. Examining the impact of experimental archaeology on different user groups.”

Whilst being the last paper on the last day of the conference isn’t ideal, I’m pleased not to be entirely out on a limb on my own, and I hope that what I have to say will be of interest. In any case, the programme looks very interesting, though I am disappointed not to see any metallurgists presenting! I can’t believe that with all the smelting and metalworking happening around the UK and Europe that no one has a paper to present.

In that vein, I’m interested in hearing anyone’s opinions on the abstract that I’ve submitted. It contains the basic outline of my ideas for a framework to describe our practices in teaching/learning. If you’ve taught or learned techniques that could be called experimental archaeology – smithing, casting, glass working, ceramics, weaving, dying, the list is endless! – I’d be really interested to hear your reflection on this framework. Be as critical as you like!

I’m also interested in hearing experiences of successful or not successful teaching experiences in experimental archaeology. So go on, have a look at the abstract and let me know what you think. Your help is much appreciated.

Learning and teaching in experimental archaeology

The ways in which past peoples communicated knowledge is of considerable importance to studies of technological processes, and is an area in which experimental archaeology could prove highly informative. Whilst some teaching of experimental work takes place within traditional Further Education structures (c.f. Sheffield University), much of the techniques we seek to study are learnt or communicated in a strictly ad-hoc, informal, and sometimes solitary manner. In all cases, it is difficult to assess methods of past communication without codifying our own methods of teaching and learning.

In this context, I use the term ‘experimental archaeology’ to encompass not only strictly empirical hypothesis testing (Johnson 1999), but also the domains of experiential work (Mathieu 2002) and the ‘re/creation’ of past technologies for demonstration, replication and pleasure. I argue against the act of seeking legitimacy in the eyes of ‘mainstream’ archaeologies (cf. Experimental archaeology session at EAA 2006) by focussing on empirical approaches, and for a rejection of the hierarchical perspective (cf. Jones 1974) which privileges this. Rather I propose an integrated model where we accept that experimental archaeologists often work within multiple domains and that this contributes to deeper, more complex understandings of technological practices than any individual approach.

Within this structure I propose four distinct patterns to learning and teaching; describing these modes as self-taught, advisory assistance, formal apprenticeships (cf. Barab and Hay, 2001) and informal participation. I discuss their use in terms of the domains of practice discussed above, and crucially how these different teaching and learning relationships contribute to different understandings of the technological process itself. The teaching and learning environment has considerable and prolonged impact on our understanding of both the finished object and the technological process, and I explore how this has the potential to influence the way we frame and contextualise the practice of these technologies within our own work, and how this can echo beyond to confines of experimentation to the interpretation of archaeological evidence and its communication.

Understanding our own learning environments therefore forms an important part of a self-reflexive and critical approach, and is necessary in contexts where we position ourselves as experts, whether those are formal academic, informal exchanges of knowledge or experimental studies or interactions with the public. In identifying the way we have learnt our own skills by mapping these different learning environments, we are closer to understanding the modern context of our experimental practice, a necessary step towards relating our own experiences to past practitioners. Whether we consider ourselves empirical, experiential or re/creative experimental archaeologists, understanding current methods of knowledge communication should help us better ground our own practice and our research into past practitioners.

Barab, S.A., and Hay, K.E., 2001. Doing science at the elbows of experts: issues related to the science apprenticeship camp. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 38 (1), 70-102.

Coles, J.M., 1979. Experimental archaeology. Academic Press, London.

Hurcombe, L., 2005. Experimental Archaeology. In Archaeology: The Key Concepts, edited by C. Renfrew and P. Bahn, 110-115. Routledge, London.

Johnson, M., 1999. Archaeological Theory. Blackwell, Oxford

Mathieu, J.R., 2002. Introduction – Experimental Archaeology: Replicating Past Objects, Behaviors, and Processes. In Experimental Archaeology: Replicating PastObjects, Behaviors, and Processes, Mathieu, J. R. (ed),  1-11. BAR International Series 1035, Oxford.

Update: You can read about the conference through a Storify I created based on the tweets that were written.

What is slag?

Slag is what we call some of the remains generated by high temperature metallurgical activity. When people smelt ore into metal or work metal by heating it, the process produces left-overs, rubbish.

Ores often have unwanted minerals associated with them, like silica, and during the process of smelting this can combine with other materials in the furnace and the fuel to produce something that looks a lot like lava. This liquid rock or slag is unwanted, and is usually discarded.

When a metal is heated to high temperatures, it often oxidises. This oxide layer is often removed or falls off the metal, and sometimes it too can combine with fuel or other materials in the immediate area. It too is often referred to as slag.

The appearance of slag, which I will talk about later, depends on many factors and its chemical composition is also highly variable. However all slags share common origins in the production or working or metal.

Why do you want to analyse it?

Metallurgical activity has been undertaken by humans for thousands of years, but we know relatively little about it. Archaeometallurgists are interested in reconstructing the methods that past people used to produce metal, but we are often hampered by the lack of physical evidence. Most metallurgical activity made use of a furnace, a large structure containing a fire, but these structures rarely survive in the archaeological record. We rarely if ever find any examples of the tools past metal workers used. The objects themselves are traded, sold, moved about, used, lost, destroyed or disposed of. It is extremely rare to find any actual metal on the site of past metallurgical activity.

The one thing that survives well is slag. Metallurgical processes, particularly smelting, can produce large quantities of slag and it survives burial well. By examining this slag we can begin to answer questions that interest archaeologists and by extension, anyone interested in the site or people in the past:

•  What sort of metallurgical process took place on the site?
• What type of furnace or other structures might have been present on this site?
• What kind of metals and/or metal objects might have been made?
• How much was made?

From these questions we can start to ask questions about how the site fits in with our knowledge of the area, or the period or occupation. We can comment on how processes were undertaken on this site in comparison to others, and perhaps talk about where the products from this site were going and what they were for. How clearly you can answer these questions, if at all, depends on the quality of the evidence from the site, but that’s true of any archaeological excavation. If the evidence permits, there’s even chance of answering more widely reaching questions:

• On what scale were Iron Age people making iron in Britain?
• How did the Romans create brass?
• What really happens inside an iron smelting furnace?
• Was there ever a ‘Bronze Age’ in central Africa?
• Who were the first people to create cast iron?

These fundamental questions are the sort that really good sets of data can help to answer. In the past slag has been ignored due to its unattractive nature and sometimes inconveniently dense deposition, but since the 1960s there’s been a slow growth in slag analysis that has begun to answer some of the questions above, among others, but substantial areas of past metallurgical activity remain largely unexplored. By analysing slag, we try and improve our knowledge not just of individual sites and people, but of fundamental technologies that underpinned human development.

Next post in the series: How iron is reduced in a bloomery furnace.

As I have discovered, the subject of slag analysis is like an iceberg – it seems insignificant on the surface, but once you get below the waterline it tends to bulge and grow at a worrying rate. Additionally, slag analysis has the habit of seeming rather mysterious. In the two years I’ve been working on slags, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is down to an almost complete lack of published texts on how to actually do slag analysis. By that I mean: what does the surface texture mean? Why do I want to look at the microstructure? Why are my fayalite crystals cored? What the hell is that weird thing? And what does it all mean anyway?

There are some texts available, but these tend to be named in misleading ways or be down right rare and hard to find. Very few of them focus on actually helping the reader learn to replicate the process with their own material; most are reports on analysis that just happen to be so well done they are inspiring. My particular favourite is actually a PhD thesis from the 1980s by a woman called Fells, working at Birmingham University. Luckily this is available to download, as it represents one of the first thorough technical studies of the microstructures of archaeological slags. In particular, the second volume is full of optical and electron micrographs and accompanying explanations, which really is what you need when you’re staring down the microscope for the first time.

I should mention here that I am not the world’s premier expert on archaeological slags; not their morphology nor their microstructure nor their chemical composition. But I do have a working knowledge, which I endeavour to improve, and I do have access to a great library and great colleagues.

As an aid to my own work, and hopefully to other people interested in the subject, I’m going to write a series of posts looking at different aspects of slag analysis. If I’m very lucky I might even get some feedback from other people studying the subject, which would be very welcome. I’ll try to make it interesting and reasonably accessible, and I can pretty much guarantee that there will be a lot of pictures. Hopefully it’ll be an interesting glimpse into the background to my work, and helpful for anyone trying to decode a specialist report!

Wiki image of the Museum of London Docklands

I have a lot of respect for the Museum of London and all its associated/partner organisations. The Museum of London itself is one of my favourite London museums, and I always take visitors there. It’s one of the few museums I know of where the galleries are laid out chronologically, and it really works. I’ve written before about how much I rated the new post-medieval galleries, so I was hopeful that the Docklands Museum would show the same talented design and interactivity.

The Docklands had done a lot of advertising in the run up to the half-term, focussing on their Pirates exhibition, so I wasn’t surprised to see lots of kids in the galleries. Luckily enough most of the spaces were large and open, and the Museum seemed to be equipped with lots of trail-making leaflets and activity sheets which were being dutifully utilised by parents. I think the museum designers have done well in this respect, as despite the large numbers of loud excited children it never became overwhelming.

However the large spaces were symptomatic of a major problem with the Docklands. It really isn’t a museum. It’s what a museum would be if you took out all the objects.

I’m usually the first person to complain that there aren’t enough interpretation panels. One of my problems with the V&A’s new galleries is that they are just glass cabinets full of shiny objects with very little information. The Docklands is the complete opposite. As with the Museum of London we’ve got chronological galleries leading you through London’s docks and ports history, from the Roman period onwards. But in the vast majority of cases these galleries are filled with large interpretation panels, massive quantities of text and lots and lots of panels with scanned reproductions of original documents printed on to them. The later became rather tiring in their regularity.

It’s hard to express quite how bare this museum is – and to be honest, I’m not sure if it really is a museum in the classical sense of the word. It isn’t a treasure trove of delights. It doesn’t contain glass cases filled with strange and wonderful objects. It contains lots and lots of panels, some paintings, and the occasional thing in a box. For the traditional museum visitor like myself and my step-mother, it was a big let-down.

There are a few saving graces. The model of London Bridge in the 1400s was delightful, and set us dreaming of what it would be like to see that today. The blacksmith’s workshop is rather unexcitingly displayed and lacks much interpretation or explanation, but I was pleased to see a collection of traditional tools, the Victorian forge and even the ceramic tuyure – even if it was unceremoniously propped next to the forge with no real context. The ‘Sailortown’ walk-through reconstructed alley-way was good, though it did seem a little like a preparatory piece for the Museum of London’s much more impressive Victorian high street gallery at the Barbican site.

The Docklands Museum does tackle some very important issues, including the slave trade and the profiteering which occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries. It tries very hard to make you interested in this worthy subject, and the history of London’s ports, but without the objects to communicate with it ends up feeling a bit like reading an extended essay. Having re-read some of the promotional literature it seems like the Docklands focuses more on children and families, so perhaps adults aren’t its main target audience. I don’t know whether the limited number of objects is actually a benefit in this context or not. Certainly the small size of the Museum, which we’d finished with in about two hours, probably helps with this, though I was sad to note how many of the ‘interactives’ were broken. However it does seems somewhat incongruous that the cafe facilities for families were limited, whilst the expensive bar-restaurant clearly aimed at adults was much larger.

For an adult audience, I really can’t recommend the Docklands unless you happen to be in the area and looking for somewhere to spend a spare hour. It isn’t worth going out of your way to visit, and don’t expect to have your mind set afire by the contents of the Museum. It’s well-laid out, and well-meaning, but so dry it tends towards the boring. Unfortunate, as I really do love the Museum of London’s main site, but it seems like the Docklands suffers for being the poor cousin.